Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: ulcer

  • The Potato Eaters: Brushstrokes of sickness and sustenance

    Jeanne DsouzaManipal, India One wants to be an honest man, one is so, one works as hard as a slave but still one cannot make both ends meet . . . One is afraid of making friends, one is afraid of moving, like one of the old lepers . . .– Vincent Van Gogh, Autumn…

  • W.W. Keen: Physician to the presidents

    Kevin R. LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States William Williams Keen served in the American Civil War and was present at the first and second Battle of Bull Run and Antietam.1 His battlefield experience led him to publish in 1864 “Gunshot Wounds and other Injuries of the Nerves and Reflex Paralysis.” He would become one of the…

  • The Girl with a Pearl Earring—A vanitas?

    James LindesayLeicester, United Kingdom It is a truism that you only have one opportunity to see a picture for the first time. However, in our image-saturated age, by the time you get to see a famous painting in the flesh (so to speak) you will have been so primed with reproductions, commentaries, and received opinions…

  • Smetana, his music, his illness

    Bedřich (Frederic) Smetana was one of the major figures of nineteenth century European music. Regarded as the founder of the Czech national school of music, he composed The Bartered Bride opera and the symphonic poem “Má Vlast” (My Homeland) with its beloved Vlatava (The Moldau) melody. Like Ludwig van Beethoven, he composed exceptional music even…

  • It takes a team

    Michael MeguidSyracuse, New York, United States I saw two bright colored polaroids: One pictured Rudolph, a burly coal miner with a white bandage about his left ankle. The second was a close-up showing a four-inch long festering ulcer overlying his Achilles tendon. Its crater floor appeared necrotic, slimy, and green. The margins looked chronically inflamed…